


Beware the Crimson Cloak!

by Azzandra



Series: The Crimson Cloak [1]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Masked Vigilante AU, With a Surprise Guest Star
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 18:17:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15954866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: Even in Europa's admittedly eccentric panoply of heroes, the Crimson Cloak stood out for a very good reason.





	Beware the Crimson Cloak!

The first time that rumors and wild tales solidified into hard facts regarding the Crimson Cloak coincided, much to the Baron's displeasure, with a picture of the heroine being splashed across the from page of a newspaper of dubious journalistic ethics.

It wasn't merely the heroics that were the problem in this case. Quite the opposite; amateur heroics had their use in any society as chaotic and shifting as Europa. Klaus had always seen a use for any such inclined individuals, if only as a sieve for truly dire crises. 

No, the heroics weren't inherently suspicious. The anonymity was.

Plenty of young heroes in Europa, but in general, the kinds of people inclined towards such activities were also disinclined from concealing their identities. Notoriety was rather the point. A hero had to build a reputation, a network of allies and helpers to help them deal with the list of enemies they would be making in the process.

The Crimson Cloak was... a mystery. She never gave her name, and never stuck around for too long. Even the photographer who had managed to snap this image of her had apparently done so just as she was leaving. The young woman was in semi-profile, most of her face concealed by a wide-brimmed hat, a high-collared cloak, and a pair of tinted glasses. A lock of blond hair escaped from under her hat, blowing in the wind dramatically, and in her hand she had a  grapple gun, ready to deploy.

The attached article described that the photograph was taken moments before the Crimson Cloak used the grapple gun, hooking a line around a cathedral's steeple and swinging off and across the rooftops, leaving the photographer to find his own way down from the locked off roof where he'd been deposited out of the way of a rampaging carnivorous plant.

Klaus was not so much worried about the article, however, as he was about the photograph. It was the kind of thing that tended to fire up the imagination of the masses. Before this, when all there was on the Crimson Cloak consisted of speculation and a handful of witness accounts, Klaus could have still had his people investigate and get to the bottom of the mystery before it got out of hand.

Now, though? Klaus glared at the newspaper set on the table before him, because it forced his hand. The Crimson Cloak could no longer stay an unknown quantity.

"Herr Baron," one of his advisors spoke, "there could very well be legitimate reasons for the young lady to hide her identity."

"Could be some less legitimate ones," someone else muttered, a grizzled old questor rubbing  his chin. "Fugitive from justice, maybe?"

"Or she has a disapproving father," came another suggestion. Every pair of eyes in the room turned to Gil as he spoke. He flushed red, but raised his chin as he doubled down. "Because she's a young lady! Some parents may disapprove of their daughter getting into heroics."

"Hm," was the Baron's only response, before he looked down at the newspaper again. His expression immediately soured again. "Whatever her reasons, we do need to know who she is and whether she is any kind of threat."

"Father, she's a hero," Gil argued.

"So is Othar," Klaus pointed out.

Gil's mouth clicked shut, because there really was no adequate answer to that. The Crimson Cloak had not done anything too onerous towards the Empire yet, but she was an unknown. Nothing would convince the Baron that she should simply be left to run amok until he knew exactly what motivated her.

The rest of the meeting proceeded apace, the subject shifting from the Crimson Cloak to other, more pressing, issues of the Empire. Gil's attention, however, remained on the one subject.

 

* * *

When Gil met the Crimson Cloak for the first time, it was--as Gil would insist emphatically--by complete coincidence.

Not that Gil didn't have, stowed away in his room, a map with pins marking all of the Crimson Cloak's sightings, and a folder with every scrap of information he could collect about her. He did have every right to a hobby, and if he received the same amused needling from Wooster that he did for his collection of Trelawney Thorpe novels, well... it wasn't like Gil was the only fanboy in Europa.

But it happened like this:

Gil was in some sleepy little town for another one of his father's insufferable tests. He was probably meant to discover that the local ruling Spark planned to invade his next door neighbor with an army of highly venomous, oversized, and extremely aggressive hedgehogs.

He did not discover this, because the Crimson Cloak did first. Instead, what Gil saw, as he was wandering the streets and sampling the local street food, was an explosion blowing out the side of a castle in the distance. Then, a streak of red barreling out through that new hole.

The locals reacted with sedate surprise, probably because they were inured to explosions coming from the Spark's castle. When the hedgehogs began pouring out of the castle's new hole like a single mass, and climbing down the hill with surprising agility, _that_ was when the locals started looking worried. The food vendor who'd just sold Gil a fried wriggly thing on a stick promptly pulled down his shutter and, by the sound of it, barricaded himself inside his stall. He was not alone in this, as vendors closed up, and townsfolk disappeared off the street, leaving Gil standing there like an idiot, alone, wondering if he had time to finish his food.

The answer was no. The hedgehogs rampaged like a single mass, a frothing brown-green wave pouring through the streets, heading straight for Gil.

He chewed quickly and swallowed, and just moments before he made a move towards hasty departure, the Crimson Cloak slammed into him bodily, her surprisingly strong arms cinching around him, and then, for lack of a better word, bounced off with Gil in tow.

The ground fell away so quickly, that Gil was lightheaded by the time he realized he was at the highest point of the arc, and then they were both falling towards a very slanted roof, and Gil made a noise that was startled and high-pitched enough that he hoped it was lost in the whoosh of the wind whipping by.

The impact with the roof was jarring, Gil scrambling to grab onto the sloped surface, but the Crimson Cloak still had an arm around his middle, keeping him from sliding down and into the sea of venomous hedgehogs. Gil could see that her glove had some a device attached to the palm of her glove, whirring loudly as it seemed to emit a powerful attracting field to help her keep a tight grip on the roof.

In fact, this up close, Gil could just peek under her cloak, which was hiding a sturdy and practical outfit festooned with all manner of devices. If he wasn't mistaken, that was a death ray on her belt, digging into Gil's hip. 

"New in town, huh?" the Crimson Cloak asked, turning her head to flash a grin. 

"Uh... tourist, actually," Gil replied. He couldn't see anything past the silver tint of her round lenses, only his own befuddled expression reflected in the glass. "Are you from around here?"

"Oh, no, it's just one of those places, you know?" she replied off-handedly, and she began a controlled slide down. She swung Gil first onto the house's high balcony, and for some reason, Gil just let himself be manhandled. 

He'd thought a lot about what he would do or say if he ever came face to face with the Crimson Cloak, but for some reason, his brain was on a ten second delay now that he was actually there, with her, in person. He could already see it would end with embarrassment on his part.

"Wait," Gil called out just as he saw her getting ready to bounce off. The gadgets on her boots were similar to ones on her gloves, except capable of giving off repulsor fields to help her jump extremely high--even when carrying a passenger,. A clever solution, for places with too few tall buildings for a grappling line.

She actually paused before jumping away, raising an eyebrow at him.

"I can help," Gil blurted out.

She gave him a lopsided smile, and didn't seem to completely believe him.

"Not getting yourself killed would be plenty helpful," she told him, and then she was off, bouncing from roof to roof, towards the castle once again.

Gil watched her go, his heart slamming in his chest, and then he slapped his face.

 

* * *

Agatha smoothed down her sleeve, making sure it covered the bandage on her arm. It did, but she kept re-checking; she could never be too cautious. If she was lucky, it would heal up completely before she even ran into her father. That was the case with plenty of her injuries, even that one time she got a shiner after an ill-advised bout of fisticuffs with a pig construct.

No such luck this time, however, because just minutes after she'd slunk into her lab in the Castle, Father wandered inside.

Bill Heterodyne stopped in the middle of the room, looking around the lab with a vaguely awkward air about him. 

"Father," Agatha said, as she placed a toolbox back onto the workbench. She tried not to sound too put out by his presence. She tried even harder not to fidget with her sleeve.

"Agatha," Bill said, trying to flash her a smile. He just looked tired, instead, like he always did. His face was lined, just as much with scars as with wrinkles, and the gray at his temples was slowly overtaking the rest of his hair. But it was his 'making an effort' smile, and Agatha couldn't find it in her to chase him off. "Working on something?"

"Uncle Barry brought me some new science journals," Agatha said. "It gave me a few ideas."

It gave her a lot of new ideas, actually, but she saved most of the good stuff for her extra-curricular activities that Father was definitely not supposed to know about. Still, that left her with plenty she could do in her lab in Castle Heterodyne.

"Is that so?" He approached her workbench, where bits and bobs that Agatha had been experimenting with were spread out. "Need any feedback?"

Agatha must have paused for entirely too long before providing an answer, because Bill started backpedaling.

"Of course, if I'm intruding--" Bill began, his expression turning stricken, "I know most kids wouldn't want their old man hovering."

"No, it's fine!" Agatha said quickly. "I was just thinking about-- well, I am stuck on this one thing, if you'd like to help!"

Bill perked up at that, and Agatha dug through drawers, finally upending one completely over the workbench.

"Uh... I should probably organize all this," Agatha said, sheepish.

Bill laughed soundlessly, but it reached his eyes.

"A tendency towards hoarding is probably one of the less awful things you inherited from the family line," Bill said instead, pulling up a chair to the workbench and taking a seat. He poked through Agatha's little devices, some partially assembled dingbots, and a few half-finished death rays.

Agatha found one of her more innocuous creations to ask his opinion on, and together, they set themselves to re-assembling and improving it until they went through three different versions. They worked well together, even for how rarely it happened, and despite her misgivings, Agatha found herself enjoying this time with her father.

She knew it was coming to an end when his heterodyning trailed off, and she looked up to see him looking at her with a faraway expression on his face.

"You know I'm only keeping you in Mechanicsburg because it's dangerous out there," he said.

Agatha very deliberately put her tools down, just so she wouldn't end up flinging them at a wall. This was how her father's attempts at spending quality time together always ended. With a rehash of this old argument. She'd not even brought it up this time, but he just couldn't leave it alone.

"I know," she said, through her clenched jaw. "It's dangerous out there and I'm safe in here, and I'll see the world when I'm older, and I have plenty of time. I know. _I know_."

Bill opened his mouth, then closed it again. Agatha's shoulders nearly came up to her ears, as she hunched defensively over her work.

"I know it may not seem like it right now, when you're cooped up and bored, but you'll have plenty of time to experience everything out there, I promise," Bill added, rising from his seat.

He backed off towards the exit, sensing that he'd worn out his welcome, and disappeared through the door without another word.

After he left, Agatha fiddled with the device some more, her mind a million miles away. But if she had any guilt over sneaking out of Mechanicsburg behind her father's back, these conversations she always ended up having with him always seemed to erase it. There was no way she'd give up being the Crimson Cloak.

**Author's Note:**

> This AU came from the cross-pollination of two plotbunnies that we both plaguing me at the same time: a Bill Lives! AU, and a Scarlet Pimpernel AU. And while I'm not going to start another longfic, I do have ideas for a few different installments set in this AU, muahahaha.


End file.
